Counting the Stars

“After you,” Niall grinned at me, opening the door to the restaurant he found for us.

I specifically told him nothing fancy or I wouldn’t touch half of the food they served. In the end, he found a quaint Italian, mom and pop place, tucked away in a not so touristy part of Los Angeles. It was only a ten minute drive from my house. There were only a few people sitting inside of the restaurant and it smelled of pizza and garlic bread. Standing inside of it and looking around, I felt extremely overdressed in my dress and heels and Niall in his polo and slacks. We both looked at each other and laughed, finding the situation extremely funny.

We sat down in a booth that was tucked away in the back corner of the restaurant. Niall had said that we didn’t want to take any chances being spotted through the window. I sat down on the right side of the booth and he sat down next to me instead of sitting across from me. I had always been one of those girls who would sit and make fun of the couples who sat next to each other in booths, but with Niall being the one by my side, it felt perfectly fine.

The hostess walked over to us and handed us both a menu and took our drink orders. Once she left Niall turned to me and smiled at me.

“You smile a lot, Mr. Horan,” I giggled, flicking him in the chest.

He continued to smile at me, “You just make me really happy.”

“You’re really cheesy around me,” I rolled my eyes.

He didn’t stop smiling, “You just make me really cheesy.”

I sighed, giving up on him. The hostess came back with our drinks, a Coke for Niall and a Sprite for myself. She took our orders and walked off, mumbling about how there was only two of us and we were ordering half the food in the restaurant. Niall laughed and mumbled a sarcastic reply.

“So, do you have a twitter as Callista that I can follow you on?” Niall asked, pulling out his Blackberry.

“I indeed do,” I answered simply. I pushed my lips together in a tight line.

“Well what is it?” He asked again, opening up the Twitter app.

I shook my head, “If I give it to you, you’re going to tweet about me and then I’m never going to have any peace and quiet on my social networking sites.”

He gave me the puppy dog eyes and pouted his lips, “Please…?”

“Fine… Just let me go turn off all of my notifications so my phone doesn’t combust from all of the blinking and dinging,” I sighed, scrolling through the Twitter settings on my phone.

Niall did a quick fist pump in victory and danced around. It was insanely cute and I couldn’t help but laugh at how happy he seemed.

“C4llista with a 4 instead of an ‘A’ is my twitter name. Please make sure your fans know that I may seem weak at first, but if they try to kill me, I will put up a fight," I smirked.

He rolled his eyes and began to type away. Seconds later the “Connect” icon had a little blue light underneath it.

@NiallOfficial: Dinner time w/ @C4llista ! Girls got a bigger appetite than me !

I rolled my eyes and typed a quick reply to him, my mentions already starting to explode.

@C4llista: @NiallOfficial Hush up or I’m going to eat all of your food! :--)

My follower count on Twitter went from 2,000 (Thanks to my tumblr followers) to over 15,000 in less than a few minutes. I didn’t even want to know how many I would have in a few days’ time.

We joked around for a little while longer before our food was brought out to us. As soon as the hostess sat the food in front of us, Niall and I both had our forks in our hands ready to dig in and eat. The chicken alfredo was the best thing that I had ever tasted in my life and the small serving wasn’t enough to please me. When Niall was in the middle of a bite of whatever he had, I went in for the kill and scooped up a piece of his food.

“CALLISTA!” He shrieked, turning towards me and pointing his fork threateningly in my face.

“Yes Niall?” I asked sweetly, smiling like an innocent angel.

“Did you really just take a bite of my food?” He asked, keeping the fork in front of my face.

“Yes, yes I did. Now can you get that fork out of my face before I eat more of your food?” I smirked, returning to my own food and finishing off my plate.

Once we finished our dinner and argued back and forth about who was going to pay, Niall finally winning the argument, we left the restaurant and began to walk down the street. It was a little after 9, so the sun had completely set and all the stars were shining brightly in the sky. We were far enough away from the major city, so there were only a few street lights illuminating the streets. The entire night had played out like the perfect scene from a movie.

We walked next to each other, a few feet separating us as we walked. Neither of us was talking, but it didn’t bother me. It was a comfortable silence that I didn’t mind. This was the kind of relationship I had always wanted. Every once and a while I’d look over at him to find him staring at me with a slight grin on his face. Seeing that would make me smile and blush, causing me to look away.

“So how did you like our first date?” Niall asked after about five minutes of silence.

I looked over at him with my eyebrows raised, “This was a date, huh?”

“Well, I mean… It could be. If you don’t want it to be a date it can just be a friendly dinner between to best friends…” Niall shrugged, not looking me in the eyes. He coughed awkwardly.

“I’d like to consider this a date… But aren’t you supposed to find some clever way to ask me out on a date that will leave me speechless and cause me to run to my laptop and post all about it on tumblr, looking to get 10,00 notes?” I laughed at my own joke, smiling at Niall to make sure he knew I didn’t find this situation awkward.

He sighed in relief, “Alright… I’ll find some clever way and then you can accomplish your goal of being Tumblr famous.”

I rolled my eyes, “Little do you know, my dear Niall, I’m already Tumblr famous. But! I will be looking forward to your creative asking out of.”

Niall grinned, “Want to become even more Tumblr famous?”

I deadpanned, “If you dare post my tumblr link on your Twitter I will jump on your back right now, beat you down to the ground, tweet a picture of you and leave you here until a fan finds you. I will watch from a few streets away and laugh as the drag you to the bed of their daddy's trunk. You will stand up and throw your arms about in horror, and at that time I'll be clutching my stomach in laughter”

Niall laughed, narrowing his eyes at, “I was gonna say post a picture of the two of us, but I’m going to avoid going with your idea. The thought of that gives me the chills!”

The rest of the night followed as so. We walked up and down the streets and joked around, constantly laughing at each other. A few times I found myself at a loss for breath because I was laughing so hard. It didn’t matter that a few people gave us weird looks; we were both having too much fun.

Somewhere, sometime while we had been walking, I began to walk a lot closer to him and we were holding hands when we arrived at my house. It didn’t dawn on me until we arrived at my front door that we had walked from the restaurant to my house and left the car in the parking lot of the restaurant.

“Uhm… Niall…” I spoke up once we were standing on my porch.

“Yes, love?” He asked, smiling lazily at me.

“We just spent the past three hours walking down the streets, to my house…. We also left my car in the restaurant parking lot…” I replied, laughing at how stupid it all sounded.

He began to laugh loudly, most likely waking up the entire neighborhood from their peaceful slumber at midnight. He didn’t say anything but just wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into a tight hug, “We’re not the brightest crayons in the box, are we?”

His voice was soft and it muffled as he spoke the words against my neck. I could practically feel his lips move as he talked, his hot breath hitting my neck as well. He pulled away and looked down at me, smiling widely, all of his teeth showing. “What are we going to do to fix this?”

“We’ll have to go tell my mom that we’re idiots and she’ll drive us over there so I can pick my car up… I can’t believe we left the car there and spent three hours walking back to my house,” I sighed, continuing to laugh.

Niall pulled his phone, snapping a picture of me really fast. He began to type away, his thumbs practically flying around the keypad.

@NiallOfficial: @C4llista left her car in t parking lot of our restaurant ! She can’t stop laughing… pic.twitter.com/abc456

I reached forward and slapped his chest playfully, “I can’t even with you! Why would you post such a horrible picture me on Twitter! You’re such a jerk!”

He rolled his eyes playfully, "You know you love me."

That was one thing I couldn't argue with.